Guess was founded by Georges, Armand, Paul, and Maurice Marciano, four brothers born in Ouarzazate, Morocco but who supposedly grew up in the south of France and were influenced by the culture and style in the region. They moved to California in 1977 and founded the company in 1981. Seed money to start the business came from the Nakash family, owners of the Jordache denim empire. Their first product was a three-zipper style of jeans they named "Marilyn" (Style # 1015). Department stores and fashion critics were initially reluctant to carry the new 'stone washed denim' jeans, but in December when Bloomingdale's finally agreed with Georges to stock two dozen pairs of the new jeans as a favor to the brothers. They sold out quickly.Their advertising campaigns began in 1982, and they introduced their iconic black-and-white ads in 1985. The ads have won numerous Clio Awards. Their fashion models have included a number of widely-recognized supermodels, many of whom first achieved prominence via the ad campaigns. Guess models have included:
Heidi Albertsen
Alessandra Ambrosio
Valeria Avdeyeva
Laura Bailey
Diora Baird
Bianca Balti
Ana Beatriz Barros
Patricia Barros
Drew Barrymore
Anna Bauman
Sasha Beznosyuk
Veronica Blume
Toshauna Boake
Larissa Bondarenko
Lauren Bowles
Brewer twins
Chris Brown
Carla Bruni
Naomi Campbell
Alissa Fosho
Karen Carreno
Amie Cartwright
Laetitia Casta
Laryssa Castro
Chanel Celaya
Shannan Click
Bree Conden
Adia Coulibaly
Ksenia Deshtchekina
Rhea Durham
Lonneke Engel
Megan Ewing
Roxana Filip
Janelle Fishmann
Beau Garrett
Diana Gartner
Tyrese Gibson
Jill Goodacre
Line Göst
Georgina Grenville
Bridget Hall
Melissa Haro
Eva Herzigova
Paris Hilton
Susan Holmes
Lauren James
Amanda Jensen
Milla Jovovich
Cynthia Kirchner
Martina Klein
Stacey Kwiatkowsky
Dominique Laniel
Suzanne Lanza
Yasmin Le Bon
Estelle Lefébure
Adriana Lima
Korina Longin
Bruna Magagna
Shirley Mallmann
Josie Maran
Valeria Mazza
Jessica Miller
Karen Mulder
Sarah Mutch
Rachel Nichols
Thais Oliveria
Julie Ordon
Carré Otis
Daniela Pestova
Rachel Pierce
Tori Praver
Noëlle Roques
Claudia Schiffer
Lisa-Marie Schneider
Ingrid Seynhaeve
Irina Sheik
Victoria Silvstedt
Anna Nicole Smith
Kim Smith
Ian Somerhalder
Landi Swanepoel
Helen Swedin
Fabiana Tambosi
Olanna Taskey
Cindy Taylor
Julia Valet
Camilla Vest
Candice Viale
Jessica Van Der Steen
Mark Vanderloo
Veronika Vařeková
Frederique van der Wal
Minki van der Westhuizen
Shana Zadrick
In the 1985 Spielberg movie "Back to the Future" Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) - wore distinctive Guess denim clothing, rumored to have been designed specially for the movie.
The Guess emblem with the famous question mark in the center.
During the 1980s Guess was one of the most popular brands of jeans. The company was one of the first companies to create designer jeans. While the first jeans were for women, in 1983 a men's line debuted. In 1984 Guess introduced its new line of watches known as "Guess," "Guess Steel," and "Guess Collection (Gc)." The watch line is still in existence today, and has been joined by a number of other accessory sidelines. In 1984, they also introduced a line of baby's clothes, called "Baby Guess."
In the 1990s, they also had a division called Guess Home, which featured bedding collections and a number of towel collections. By the end of the decade, sales dropped and Guess discontinued their home division.
[edit] Stagnation and Controversy
After Abigail's line in the 1980s the company began to take a downturn during the nineties, as other companies such as Calvin Klein, Diesel, Tommy Hilfiger, and Gap began rising in popularity. Guess's sales suffered, and its stock dropped dramatically.
As well as increasing competition, Guess also saw a serious tarnishing of its image during this time. More significantly, as awareness of sweatshop use among major corporations grew, Guess was quickly marked as a major offender in this area. In 1992, Guess contractors faced litigation from the US Department of Labor (DOL) due to failure to pay their employees the minimum wage or adequate overtime. Rather than face a court case, $573,000 in back wages was paid to employees.
Soon afterward, Guess promised to monitor their contractors for illegal activity, and the company earned a place on the US DOL's 'Trendsetters List', but this position was suspended several years later in 1996 after independent inspectors found violations of regulations at seven of the company's contractors. In the same year the company was sued by the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), again because of failure to pay the minimum wage or overtime to workers. The settlement, supervised by the US Department of Labor, saw the reinstatement of 8 workers found to have been illegally fired and another $80,000 in back pay given to workers, but almost immediately afterward Guess announced that it was moving its sewing production to Mexico. The company denied that the move was related to these court cases, but its public image continued to suffer.
Throughout the nineties, UNITE continued a public relations campaign against Guess, focusing on the experiences of former employees. Eventually, Guess countered with a defamation suit against Unite and several of its officials, while in 1997 the company ran full-page ads in many major American newspapers claiming that its contractors were 'guaranteed 100% free of sweatshop labour'. The wording of these ads was changed after federal authorities complained that the claims had not been made by anyone in the government and had no official status.
While Guess saw its image severely tarnished in the United States, the company still remained fairly profitable. Guess especially began expanding in the less competitive and increasingly lucrative European and Japanese markets.
In 2005 Guess pulled a line of t-shirts from the market after Stanford’s Colombian residents called for a boycott of the company. "Ski Colombia: Always Plenty of Fresh Powder" was designed on the t-shirts released by the company in the second quarter of 2005 -- referencing to Colombia's drug-trafficking problem. Guess sent apology letters to all those who implied the company was setting a negative image of the country, however the letters seemingly left those still unsatisfied.
